Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Stuff and stuffiness

Flood from bottom upAt a dinner last night, I heard of some wonderful stuff happening around the whole web 2.0 thing with blogs, wikis, podcasts, forums, FAQs, games rising like a flood from the bottom up. Eveyone agreed that this was a major force in learning and that it is irreversible. Orgnisations are up to their ankes, sometimes knees, even their waists in this stuff. It's not a rising tide, as tides go out - it's a flood.

These were senior learning folk from a major oil and gas company, travel company, consultancy, institute, police and large public provider of e-learning. They were all of one avoice about the power and now teh evience that this stuff has taken route and bubbling up in organisations.

Clive Shepherd has written a funny and informative post showing how far off the mark the CIPD is in terms of seeing what is happening within companies on learning, mainly because its members can't see past their own narrow delivery of 'courses'. They don't so much have their finger on the pulse as their fingers on their own pulses - and there's little sign of life. Everywhere I go I see traditional training being pushed back into the corner of compliance while people get on with the task of sharing in order to 'get the job done'.

Stuff and stuffinessAll of this social networking, blogging, wikis etc has become a way of life, and young employees simply expect this stuff. Recruitment sites are full of blogs and web 2.0 inspired ideas and content. We heard an interesting tale of a young high flier literally walk out of the door on day one as he encountered the training department's stuffy and uninspiring induction dump.